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Saturday, December 14, 2013

I always heard that in Germany Christmas shopping was
relegated to two weeks prior to the holiday. This sounds so appealing and there
is no sense repeating what we all whine about as we stand in line, with
Christmas specials in hand, in September. I am also reminded that Germans still
hang real lit candles on their trees (Yikes!) and believe their engineering is
actually superior.I owned two
Volkswagens that can dispute that claim.

In recent years I have made it mandatory to complete all my
shopping on line.The era when major
department stores ushered in Santa during the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and
doors opened to display the wonderment of the season, has long since passed. It
ended just a few years after Ralphie received his Red Rider BB rifle.

By the time Cyber Monday arrived my shopping was done, or so
I thought.

I was using my wife’s old laptop to type my blog and email
while sitting on my lay-z-boy each evening.She was much more tech savvy with her windows 8 laptop and her Android
tablet and kept insisting that I should invest in a newer model, not the 15
pound hand-me-down prototype I came to love.She almost convinced me when she explained that on the newer models the
screen was in color and you could read the display.

I continued to hold out, my cheapness keeping me in check,
until the inevitable happened.My
laptop fell to the ground and shattered into pieces, on Cyber Monday, as if
choreographed by my wife using some kind of laptop voodoo doll with special
powers.

My choice was to now decide if I would continue on, writing
on a desktop, two stories up and sitting on my wooden desk chair, or relax
with elevated feet and dozing off between paragraphs.

Napping and comfort won out, but the big bargain day was
coming to a close with only minutes away to secure the best deal.

On line madness began, eager to find a great bargain,
scanning internet pages faster than an over-caffeinated Kenyan marathon runner.
And then it happened. The best deal, within my budget, was sold out on each and
every site I searched.

Oh Cyber Monday, you just can't trust that day!

I was doomed, choices to be made now as to whether or
not climb a mountain of steps and continue to produce a blog read by 24 people
in the Ukraine or scrap the project for a Yuengling and a little sloth.

To my amazement we no longer have just one “Cyber Monday”
but extensions have been made creating a new normal shopping bonanza.We had a special two-day after Monday event
that has extended into Cyber Week and now, 10 days later, became Cyber Month
enabling me to snag a great deal at my local Best Buy.

I can now continue to entertain the Ukrainians’ from the
comfort of a well-worn sofa cushion, right after this short nap.